Sal's Presence

The autumn of Winstone brought along a sort of melancholy which few of the residents could escape. It was noticed in small ways that accumulated until a conclusion of dreariness was reached, the scent of death in the breeze, the yellowing lawns and cracking gardens, or the searing scarlet of the sunset, like blood on a fire lit canvas.

Winstone was layered with secluded grasslands and spaced out avenues. Willow trees sprung up in these places, outside of houses, far away from the bustle of the busy streets. It was quiet and cold, and far from any sane thought inhabitants of this land could conjure. The silence was too much, too acute to think in terms of normalcy. It was in front of one of these distanced houses, sitting on a rock and staring at the tops of trees across the field, that Sal considered one of these searing sunsets while his nose ran and his fingers reddened in the chill. The ground was moist beneath his boots and his lip twitched at the sound of them squishing in the mud.

"I never did like that sound...I hear it more often now."

"Really?" Sal said, unamused. He tugged his coat so it fit snugly across his back. A brown curl hung by his temple. She pushed it back casually and he flinched.

"I'd prefer a squish to a snap..."

Her pail hand recoiled and went to rest by his. She was silent and he took note of it, biting at his lips until he could taste the metallic tang of blood.

"You still blame me?" she asked with tears in her eyes. Her head hung loosely from her neck so that they dropped and sunk into the ground. The flowers she'd had in her hair, twined around the strands and tucked behind her ears, drifted down with them. They lay there, pale pink petals lightly strewn against the dirt.

"I'll never not...did you think it would bring you peace or something? Look at you now. Stuck." Pathetic, he thought as his heart pounded with a sudden piercing ache.

"It's better now...harder to think, but I'm much more tired," her voice slipped from her lips in a whisper. Her shoulders shook in a fleeting fit of sobs. "I wish you wouldn't be mad at me...I'm sorry for it."

"I know you are, anyone would be. Anyone would regret it, but it hurts me still, to look at you, to think of you...to hear you. All hours of the night, you sing, you talk, you cry...why don't you let me rest?"

"Because I can't rest...like you said...I'm stuck." The words dribbled out like the high, warning ring of a bell.

"Then bother someone else...your mother still sobs to no avail, your father screams for you to come back, but you bother me, I was barely there, I was fleeting."

"No...no, you weren't..."

"I was someone separate from your life..."

"And yet somehow very involved in my death."

"The state of your current being maybe, but not your death," he said, shaking his head. "The day you passed me on the street hurt me more than I care to admit, but I figure there's no point in keeping secrets or saving face, you...know that was awful of you."

The sun was slipping past the tops of the trees, the contrast of the colors glaring against the opaque silhouette of the forest. Sal's head bobbed in exhaustion and rose again so that his nose pointed toward the blending sky.

"I don't like having to listen to you...sometimes, I want to hear your voice, but it's different now...it's marred and muddled, and I don't think there's anything I can do to fix that...that's just the way you sound now..."

"There isn't anything I can do either...that's the way you perceive me..."

A few moments of silence passed between them. It was neither awkward nor comfortable, but instead indicative of the opportunities they once had, the lives they once lived, wherein the chance for peace and serenity was still there, within reach, almost a promise to their future selves. The wind coasted in to rustle Sal's hair and brush through her soul. It was a cool breath produced from a shiver of the world's lungs, released to relax their tempers and remind them of their realities, differing and distancing, but still connected. Intertwined. Sal did not want to acknowledge it, because he did not want to feel as he did, but there is no denying our stories, and there is no use in trying. The sun was setting. The sun was setting spitefully, as if its motivation was to hurt him and her, equally. Their mere moments, bunched together in a slew of cryptic words, were disappearing as the day disappears and gives the stage to the night and the moon and the stars. A cycle. Simply.

"I'm not even really sure if you're there, or if I'm imagining this in a fit of grief to make myself feel better...to make my sentiments known to some strange manifestation of your presence."

"I am here."

"Or I am imagining you say that?"

"I can't do much to convince you that you are not."

He did not respond.

"So I suppose, if you really think I am only hear to listen or for you to feel at peace, you should take advantage of this time...there may come a time when I do not return in any capacity."

"That's..." Sal paused and sighed, "not a bad idea, in light of the situation."

The sun dipped further beyond the horizon, and Sal's cheeks stung with the cold.

"I don't know why you keep coming back to me, if I'm imagining you, or if you are really there...there are moments throughout the day when you slip in and out of my mind, and I can never decide if I think upon you with spite or with longing...with dread or with some strange, mutilated happiness that accompanies the knowledge that I will never worry for you again, at least not in the same way. You've punctuated your life with a dismal and heart wrenching period, and there is nothing I or anyone else can do to correct your mistake--and it was a mistake, that much I am sure of. I am happy to know that you are not suffering in the same way you used to, but it hurts me to know that you were weary of this world, and now are weary of the one suspended between the former and the latter, which I cannot bring myself to call paradise for the mystery of it. The only thing I am sure of is that your death, like all the ones before and all the ones to come, is final and permanent. So now, everything that I felt for you at the time of your death is final and permanent. That is how I knew you, and that is how I will remember you."

Sal looked to his right, half hoping and half dreading the somber look of her face, the waves of black hair around her cheeks and the warmth of her sad smile, but she was not there. The wind blew in the same stinging rush and his cheeks, his nose, his ears, his fingers, all glowed with the red swell of blood beneath his skin. He swiped at his nose, and then at his cheeks when he realized that tears escaped his tired eyes. His gaze flicked to the ground below him, as the sun set in finality for the day, and glimpsed the blush pink of petals. It was then that he resigned himself to slumber and hoped for a deep, silent sleep.